Women and the Gift

Description

Beyond women as exchange objects or self-sacrificing subjects

Recent inquiries into the concept of the gift have been largely male-dominated and thus have ignored important aspects of the gift from a woman's point of view. In the light of philosophical work by Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, and Bataille, Women and the Gift reflects how women respond to the notion of the gift and relationships of giving. This collection evaluates and critiques previous work on the gift and also responds to how women view care, fidelity, generosity, trust, and independence in light of the gift.

Acknowledgments

Introduction \ Morny Joy
1. Pandora and the Ambiguous Works of Women: All-Taking or All-Giving? \ Deborah Lyons
2. Nietzsche, the Gift, and the Taken for Granted \ Lorraine Markotic
3. "Everything Comes Back to It": Woman as the Gift in Derrida \ Nancy J. Holland
4. Melancholia, Forgiveness, and the Logic of The Gift \ Kathleen O'Grady
5. Gift of Being, Gift of Self \ Mariana Ortega
6. The Gift of Being, Gift of World(s): Irigaray on Heidegger \ Maria Cimitile
7. Graceful Gifts: Hélène Cixous and the Radical Gifts of Other Love \ Sal Renshaw
8. John Milbank and the Feminine Gift \ Rachel Muers
9. De Beauvoir and the Myth of the Given \ Victoria Barker
10. Women and the Gift: Speculations on the "Given" and the "All-Giving" \ Morny Joy

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religion
• Philosophy of religion
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010339
• Langue: English

Extrait

WOMEN AND THE GIFT
Women and the Gift
BEYOND THE GIVEN AND ALL-GIVING
Edited by Morny Joy
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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2013 by Indiana University Press
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Women and the gift : beyond the given and all-giving / edited by Morny Joy.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00663-9 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00664-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01033-9 (e-book) 1. Women-Psychology. 2. Generosity. 3. Magnanimity. I. Joy, Morny, editor of compilation.
HQ1206.W8742 2013
155.3'33-dc23 2013006921
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Morny Joy
1. Pandora and the Ambiguous Works of Women: All-Taking or All-Giving? / Deborah Lyons
2. Nietzsche, the Gift, and the Taken for Granted / Lorraine Markotic
3. Everything Comes Back to It : Woman as the Gift in Derrida / Nancy J. Holland
4. Melancholia, Forgiveness, and the Logic of The Gift / Kathleen O Grady
5. Gift of Being, Gift of Self / Mariana Ortega
6. The Gift of Being, Gift of World(s): Irigaray on Heidegger / Maria Cimitile
7. Graceful Gifts: H l ne Cixous and the Radical Gifts of Other Love / Sal Renshaw
8. John Milbank and the Feminine Gift / Rachel Muers
9. De Beauvoir and the Myth of the Given / Victoria Barker
10. Women and the Gift: Speculations on the Given and the All-Giving / Morny Joy
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would first like to thank all of the contributors to this volume for their patience and commitment during the years that it took to bring this project to fruition. Then I would like to thank profusely my husband, John King, for his assistance in all things electronic and technical, as well as for his constant supportive presence. Finally, I am indebted to the anonymous final reader of the volume whose searching questions prodded me to clarify my own position and refine my arguments in the introduction to the volume.
WOMEN AND THE GIFT
Introduction
Morny Joy
Gift is a word with many different resonances-of celebration, of appreciation and thanks, of farewell, of sharing, of reward, even of compensation. Yet it can also have less positive connotations of indebtedness as an obligation to reciprocate in kind, or in excess. There are also warnings about the duplicitous motives of certain people bearing gifts-the Greeks with the Trojan horse come to mind. Finally there is Pandora, so aptly named, perhaps the prototype for women s ambivalent relation to the gift-at once bountiful yet potentially malevolent. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, the association of women with the gift has been the focus of a number of studies by male thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida ([1978] 1979, [1991] 1992b) and Georges Bataille ([1957] 1987, 1985). In their writings women were portrayed as emblematic of a mode of excess. Their idealized evocations of women and the feminine also promoted a notion of giving without any expectation of return. 1 Such depictions, however, had nothing to do with women themselves, as women were not consulted about being represented in this manner. It is intriguing to surmise the motives for this development. It could be interpreted as a protest against the exploitation of women, or perhaps as a rebuttal of bourgeois complacency, or maybe even as a rejection of obsessive late capitalism. Such extravagant gestures, however, were also in the French tradition of elaborate commentary on the classic book of Marcel Mauss, The Gift ([1924] 1990).
Mauss s work, however, did not concern itself with women, except for a few minor references. It was written from ethnological, sociological, and historical perspectives, exploring variations on the theme of the gift so as to appreciate its aesthetic, moral, religious, and economic motivations (Mauss [1924] 1990, 107). His reflections ranged from commentary on studies of the indigenous peoples of North America, Oceania, and Australia written by earlier ethnographers to historical examination of Roman and Germanic legal systems. It was Claude L vi-Strauss, a former student of Mauss, who proposed in The Elementary Structures of Kinship ([1949] 1969) that women, as gifts given in marriage, constituted the gift par excellence, thus establishing the foundation for premonetary exchange systems. His suggestion was certainly controversial-today as much for its colonialist views as for its provocative assumptions about women. This legacy underlies and inevitably influences much contemporary discussion about women and the gift. Undoubtedly Mauss s and L vi-Strauss s proclamations about the gift do provide a provocation to revisit their data, as well as to try and extricate any further deliberations on this topic from their own Eurocentric preoccupations.
Recent studies, such as The Potlatch Papers , by Christopher Bracken (1997), have been extremely helpful in indicating some of Mauss s and L vi-Strauss s more dubious colonialist claims. Bracken also points to a contradiction inherent in locating their project at the limits of western thought as it encounters the other. 2 He demonstrates that these limits are actually protective boundaries that indeed impede the possibilities for learning anything from other peoples. Bracken describes how the gift is symptomatic of the implicit prejudices of western thought and language in attempts to define other peoples in relation to its presumed self-image. His discussions of the potlatch ceremony and western efforts to contain and define the perceived profligate waste involved-both literally and legally-are telling. Bracken s analyses of the writings of Gilbert Sproat, a nineteenth-century government agent; of the anthropologist Franz Boas; and even of Derrida s more recent commentary on Mauss actually expose these writers inability to discern and express the potlatch s meaning, as it will forever exceed their grasp (Bracken 1997, 48-49, 153-62). Yet such appropriations of indigenous peoples traditions still continue to service western desires and designs, be they neocolonial, ethnological, or deconstructive.
So why write a book on women and the gift today? Where does it belong, if not in the history of such deceptive and compromised enterprises? It is only too apparent that there can no longer be any appeal today to women to provide a figure of infinite generosity, although there are still contemporary writers, such as Genevieve Vaughan (1997, 2007), who believe they can. Nor can one presume in this age of ber-commodification, of continued exploitation by neocolonial interests in a globalized world, 3 to introduce a theory exempt from any complicity-of either an intellectual or a material nature.
The first response to such challenges would be to note that although such thinkers as H l ne Cixous in Sorties (Cixous 1986), Luce Irigaray ([1977] 1985, [1987] 1993), Marilyn Strathern (1988), and Annette Weiner (1976) have passionately written on aspects of the gift and its relation to women, there has not been a comprehensive collection that appraises women s own interventions both on the gift itself and on the pronouncements made by the men. Of itself, however, such a rationale alone is not persuasive. So, while the stated intention of the volume is to provide a forum for present-day women scholars to reflect on the nature of the gift, its aspirations are more ambitious. The hope is that the book will appeal to readers of many backgrounds who want to understand how women are defining their roles and making considered responses to the challenges of contemporary existence. These challenges include relationships of care, fidelity, generosity, and trust, such as the gift often evokes. The list of topics discussed is not exhaustive, but it does represent the most prominent ideas and ideals that have been advanced recently. The crucial question is whether in this alleged postmodern, postcolonial, postfeminist, and postsecular age, these issues can engage the hearts and intellects of like-minded women.
In earlier commentaries, especially those on the work of Marcel Mauss and Claude L vi-Strauss, the gift was employed to ascribe certain roles for women, as well as to designate attributes considered appropriate for a docile and amenable female character. Then the writings of Derrida and Bataille introduced a new model of femininity-where women s extravagant generosity subverted former constraints. These pronouncements were declared by male scholars in the absence of women themselves and without regard for their own input. It is time to undertake a thorough evaluation of all such artificial constructs. To reflect on women and the gift today is to conduct a careful, if not rigorous, examination in light of all that has been learned by women from many years of feminist interrogation. What recommendations can be distilled from the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears that have been expended in the past forty years as women have struggled to achieve integrity and recognition? These have not been easy years,